Upgrading from BSD12.2 to BSD13.2

Reply for SirDice:

Regarding your comment: "Because Ubuntu has support for booting on 32-bit (U)EFI? FreeBSD has never, and will never, support 32-bit (U)EFI."

Then this just points to a problem with the latest FreeBSD 13 & 14 Boot loader, because if there is no UEFI 32-bit booting mode, they by inference any U(EFI) would fail to boot irrespective of FreeBSD versions. As I have said FreeBSD versions up to 12.4 will boot and can be installed, but not the latest Versions!
Can you offer any reasons for this?

Reply For Eirchans: I am assuming that the 14.1-RELEASE live version is different from the ISO version I will look into just trying a boot image and your suggestion.
 
Could you at least explain why you still think this has anything to do with 32bit EFI stuff? I'm repeating myself now, from what you describe, obviously your loader(8) is running fine (it shows the boot menu and starts booting), it just fails to initialize the EFI framebuffer. And /boot/loader.efi is a 64bit binary (/boot/loader.efi: PE32+ executable (EFI application) x86-64). And as SirDice said, it's always been.
 
I think that since it has been mentioned that FreeBSD has never booted in 32-bit U(EFI) mode, which would be common on all Versions of FreeBSD, then there is an issue or a different default mode setting in the boot loader, or as one of the Developers has pointed out the latest versions of FreeBSD are now packaged with three different types of boot loader flavors based on loader(8) and that, I could try other flavors of the boot loader, but there are no instructions on how to do this. See Zirias's posting relating to the three types of flavors.

Under the History section of the loader(8):
The loader first appeared in FreeBSD 3.1. The loader scripting language changed to Lua by default in FreeBSD 12.0.

Therefore there were changes made to the loader from FreeBSD 12 onwards, which would appear to explain why the later versions of FreeBSD have a booting issue.
 
Reply for Ziaias:

I initially thought that since FreeBSD had withdrawn 32-bit support, and that early Mac hardware had 64-bit Intel CPUs but Apple locked off full 64-bit booting in their EFI firmware/OSX software, that was possibly one reason why FreeBSD versions 13 upwards would not boot.

However that may only apply when trying to install different versions of Apple OSX, but since the EFI is being booted by a different OS i.e. Linux, FreeBSD that possibly may not apply, as the booting process is independent of Apple's EFI boot loader file.

But after reading both SirDice postings RE FreeBSD never supports 32-bit loading and your posts and reading the loader information (8). it now points to possible changes made in the loader, I am now of the view that either there is an issue with the current loader or a different default mode setting in the latest version of FreeBSD 13 upwards.

I cannot believe that I can boot and Install FreeBSD 12 without any problems, but cannot install or boot a later version from 13 upwards, it does not make any sense. Since the loader fails to initialize the EFI framebuffer, are there any workarounds that can change the parameters of the EFI framebuffer?

My question is: Why FreeBSD version 12 successfully initialize the EFI framebuffer, and allow the booting process to complete, but from versions 13 upwards they all fail to initialize the EFI framebuffer, what has changed?

I don't think this is just an isolated case, as I have read on other threads that issues have been reported on other types of hardware not booting in later versions of FreeBSD, mainly more PC-based Hardware.

Can you explain how to try the other types of flavors of the boot loader, I would try them.
 
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